Below you will be able to find the VDMA priorities for WG 5, as laid down in our position paper called "the priorities of VDMA for the Trade and Technology Council between the EU and US":

1) Transatlantic regulatory frameworks must minimize frictions and barriers to the flow of data:

For the export-oriented mechanical engineering companies, the flow of machine data between companies and across borders is essential. Digital industrial use cases such as remote maintenance, condition monitoring or data exchange and digital service platform are based on smoothness data flow on the one hand, and the protection of trade secrets and conformity with data protection rules on the other hand. To allow and promote cross-border digital services and business cases, the corresponding rules should be streamlined and harmonized as much as possible, avoiding for example data localization obligations, prescriptive national technical requirements or unjustified data disclosure requirements.

Digital technologies in the EU are increasingly the subject of regulation and harmonized standardization (e.g. AI, data management and access, platforms). The regulatory frameworks should be aligned and the related standardization should be connectable and compatible with International Standardization. A common strategy for international standardization should be considered. The objective should be to facilitate a free flow of data and digitized products, including production equipment with software and other embedded digital functionalities.

2) The EU and US need a successor arrangement to the EU-US Privacy Shield:

While mechanical engineering companies are generally not the focus of data protection regulations, they are nonetheless affected by them. There is no business model in the mechanical engineering industry that monetizes personal data. However, the exchange of customer data with US subsidiaries, the use of US cloud services, etc. pose difficult data protection issues for the mechanical engineering industry, including the threat of monetary penalties for breaches of GDPR. Even machine data, which in principle has no personal reference, can fall under the regulations due to the broad scope of the GDPR, at least as so-called mixed data sets, so that a legally secure, reliable transfer of this data to third countries such as the USA is essential. The current state of legal uncertainty in the wake of the EU Court of Justice’s Schrems II decision places a lasting burden on SMEs in particular. For this reason, VDMA strongly supports a swift conclusion of the current negotiations between the EU and US on a successor arrangement, which meets the requirements of the EU Court of Justice.